Season review: Metallurg. Records, Continental Cup, and semifinals disappointment
KHL.ru continues its club-by-club review of the 2025-2026 season. Metallurg had an excellent regular season and reached the Gagarin Cup semifinals.
Metallurg emerged as one of the biggest winners of the 2025 offseason after landing one of the KHL’s premier forwards, Vladimir Tkachyov, from Avangard. Adding a player of his caliber to an already potent offense paid immediate dividends, as Metallurg enjoyed an outstanding regular season.
Magnitogorsk opened the campaign with an eight-game point streak. The run ended in a loss to Ak Bars after surrendering a three-goal lead, but Andrei Razin’s men responded in impressive fashion by putting together a five-game winning streak. Everything seemed to click for Magnitka, which climbed to the top of the Eastern Conference in September and never relinquished first place for the remainder of the regular season.
By the end of the regular season, Metallurg had set a new club record with 49 victories, established a new KHL record for most goals scored in a single regular season (251), and captured the Viktor Tikhonov Continental Cup for the first time in franchise history.
“We went through virtually the entire season with the same roster and without any significant slumps. The only exception was Evgeny Kuznetsov, who came and then left. Excluding the final two games, when we played a reserve lineup, we suffered only ten regulation losses in 66 games. We never lost more than two straight games beyond regulation. You could call it a unique season,” Razin said when reflecting on the regular season.
Metallurg carried that momentum into the playoffs, dispatching Sibir 4-1 in the opening round before defeating Torpedo 4-1 to reach the KHL semifinals for the eighth time in club history. There, they faced Ak Bars, a team with whom they had split the regular-season series 2-2. Kazan claimed Game One by a 5:2 score before Metallurg answered with a 4:2 victory. However, Ak Bars then reeled off three consecutive wins. The series concluded with a thrilling Game Five in which Metallurg erased three separate deficits, only to fall in OT.
Best players
It took Tkachyov sixteen games to score his first goal for Metallurg, but by then he had already racked up fifteen assists. He finished the regular season with 71 (13+58) points, becoming the league’s top playmaker while posting the fifth-highest single-season point total in Metallurg’s KHL history. He added another 10 (2+8) points in the playoffs.
His most productive game of the season also happened to be the night he scored his first goal for Metallurg. On Oct. 19 against Neftekhimik, Tkachyov recorded five points (1+4), matching the best single-game offensive performance of his KHL career.
Tkachyov set them up, and Kantserov buried them. The young forward led the KHL regular season in goals, tripling last season’s output by scoring 36 times. In doing so, he matched Kirill Kaprizov’s record as the youngest player ever to win the KHL goal-scoring title, with both accomplishing the feat at age 21. Kantserov added four more goals in the playoffs to finish the season with 72 (40+32) points across the regular season and the elimination stage.
Orekhov has clearly found his home in Magnitogorsk, with his numbers improving every season. In 2025-2026, the defenseman led Metallurg in average ice time (18:32), recorded 37 (11+26) points, and posted an outstanding plus-39 rating. That differential was by far the best on the team and ranked second in the entire KHL, finishing just two points behind Lokomotiv’s defenseman Martin Gernat.
Head coach
The 2025-2026 campaign was Andrei Razin’s third season behind the Metallurg bench. During that span, he guided the club to both the Gagarin Cup and the Continental Cup while establishing one of the KHL’s most entertaining, high-scoring styles of play.
As Metallurg’s head coach, Razin led the team in 248 games and collected 163 victories. Both figures rank second in club history during the KHL era, trailing only Ilya Vorobyov, who recorded 442 games and 258 wins. Given those results, it came as little surprise when Metallurg signed Razin to a contract extension through the end of the 2027-2028 season in December 2025.
Best game
Metallurg played no shortage of entertaining games during the season, but the home New Year’s derby against Traktor stood out. A pair of goals from Roman Kantserov gave Metallurg a two-goal lead midway through the second period, only for Traktor to erase the deficit and tie the game at three over the next 20 minutes. Alexander Petunin restored Metallurg’s lead in the 57th minute, and the game appeared to be decided, but Grigory Dronov found the equalizer for Traktor. The drama continued into overtime, where Yegor Korobkin pounced on a rebound to score the game-winner and seal a thrilling holiday victory for Metallurg.
Young players
Andrei Razin has never been afraid to give young players meaningful opportunities with Metallurg. In fact, the club iced an almost entirely youth lineup for its final two regular-season games. Altogether, 24 players born in 2003 or later appeared in at least one game for Metallurg during the 2025-2026 season.
Every goalie who suited up for Metallurg belonged to that age group. Ilya Nabokov didn’t quite match the standard he had set in previous seasons, but Alexander Smolin stepped up when needed. Yegor Kramzin made his KHL debut shortly after turning 21, while Albert Utkin also saw action during the season.
On defense, Alexander Siryatsky was the busiest U23 blueliner, appearing in 42 games while averaging 12:44 of ice time and recording five points (2+3) with a minus-4 rating. Another notable milestone came when 20-year-old Yaroslav Mukhranov, the JHL’s Defenseman of the Year, made his KHL debut. He scored in his very first game and later appeared in the playoffs as well.
Up front, Roman Kantserov was unquestionably Metallurg’s brightest young star. He was followed by Andrei Kozlov (62 games, 8+9), Mikhail Fyodorov (66 games, 9+7), and Igor Nechayev (33 games, 2+4). Fyodorov was nominated for KHL Rookie of the Year and finished second in the voting by KHL club representatives, behind only Alexander Zharovsky.
Offseason moves
Metallurg’s roster will look noticeably different next season. Top-scoring defenseman Robin Press has departed, while Ilya Nabokov and Roman Kantserov have moved to North America. Alexander Petunin signed with Neftekhimik, Derek Barach joined CSKA, and team captain Alexei Maklyukov was traded to SKA in exchange for two Yegors: goaltender Yegor Zavragin and defenseman Yegor Zelenov.
Among the club’s most significant additions are defenseman Vladislav Provolnev, formerly of CSKA, and forward Nathan Todd, who helped Ak Bars eliminate Metallurg from the Gagarin Cup Playoffs. A productive and versatile forward with 122 (44+78) points in 153 KHL games, Todd is expected to take over Kantserov’s spot on one of Metallurg’s top offensive lines.
